


The Taste of Pomegranates

by weakinteraction



Category: Hellenistic Religion & Lore
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Trick or Treat - extra treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone at the feast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Pomegranates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kikibug13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/gifts).



The feast continues around her, a banquet given in her honour by her husband on the occasion of her return to his side. A banquet at which she will eat nothing. But here in Elysium she can at least watch others enjoy themselves, those mortals who by good fortune or good deeds come to find themselves in the garden of the afterlife, where the trees perpetually bear the sweetest fruit.

It is four days since she returned to her throne. Her life is marked out in fours.

The four pomegranate seeds he tricked her into eating. She glances to one side and sure enough he is eating pomegranate now, so that later his kisses will taste of it, a reminder of his claim over her.

Four months spent here in the underworld, one for each seed. Four months in which in the world above the pomegranate tree bears its fruit even as the rest of nature obeys her mother's command to grieve for her loss.

Four rivers criss-crossing the underworld, once she has made her way across the Styx. Four realms to visit, each time she returns, carrying the curses of the mortals on the souls of the dead. Those little four sided tablets of clay, so earnestly inscribed to her, and her most sacred duty. And yet how can the judgements of mortals on those who have come before them to this place matter when they have already been in front of the tribunal? And yet every time she returns, her first act is to visit all those who have been cursed.

In Tartarus and the Fields of Punishment, they have some use, lining the cells of the wicked, to remind them that not only the gods judge their crimes. But their torments have already been perfected.

In Asphodel, the realm of the Lethe drinkers, what use is a curse on one who no longer has their mortal identity? And here in Elysium, how could it be a true paradise if the blessed could also be cursed? Still she takes them, but they crumble into nothingness as soon as she enters this domain, the details of what was written on them fleeing from her memory as though she herself had drunk from the river of oblivion.

And yet it is here, in Elysium, that she is most heartbroken. For this is what the world above was once like, before her abduction, before her mother's tears. An eternal fecund summer in which she danced and played, carefree. Now she is the dread queen of the underworld, whom mortals dare not name, but she cannot enjoy this recreation of her old life, for to eat but one morsel is to doom herself to spend eternity here.

There are times when she is tempted. There are times when it is painfully obvious that it is what her husband wants. And yet she knows that if she did come close to succumbing to the temptation, it would be his hand closing over hers to stop her bringing the food to her mouth, for if she stays, the Earth becomes barren, and where then will his new subjects come from? No. All he will ever let her taste while she stays with him is the pomegranate on his lips.

The only real curse she carries with her each time she enters that truly matters is her own.


End file.
